Limitations in Many Languages: Memoirs of Immigrant Students

This Multicultural Responsive curriculum unit offers teachers
and students a predictable guide of instructional practices for teaching and
learning the Memoir genre and its characteristics. It is intended for English language learners (Ell) in ninth
grade. The theme in this unit is “Limitations”
and students will have the opportunity to read a
variety of authors from different cultural backgrounds that will inspire them
to evoke memories of their lives experiences and to write about them.

The students will learn and apply
different reading and writing strategies to understand concept and content
related to the Memoir genre. The students will demonstrate comprehension of the
concept by citing textual evidences from a
variety of multicultural literacy works. They will build semantic knowledge to
understand the relationships between words and phrases across the texts. The
students will examine on the limitations characters in the stories experienced
and apply newly gained knowledge to new situations by reflecting on their own
limitations during class discussions that will help them to foresee the process
of writing a Memoir as a problem solving. The students will demonstrate the
different processes of writing by rewriting and editing their personal
narrative, and applying 21st century skills by using technology to
create a digital Memoir book. Students will demonstrate how citizens
participate and contribute to the wellbeing of
the community by promoting cultural awareness when presenting their digital
book during a Ted Memoir Talk to the class and teachers in the school.